Fighting For Feminism

A YOUNG IRANIAN WOMAN lies in a Tehran hosptial, connected to all kinds of tubes in Intensive Care, as she has been for more than three weeks. Just yesterday her doctor formally declared her brain dead: presumably, the decision what to do will soon come from her family. She ended up this way because, horror of all horrors, she believes in gender equality in a country in which the very thought of gender equality is anathema, stricly forbidden. She protested gender inequality, the Iranian suppression of women, by leaving her home and going out in public without her head scarf. Either without it altogether, or wearing it improperly, one of the two, either one is serious trouble. All Iran all women wear a head scarf, called a "hijab", perhaps, in public, and they wear it properly. Over the past few months there has been an uprising of women in Iran, women out in and on the streets, organized protesting, demanding freedom from oppression, gender equality, fair treatment. The government, using the state police, have responded extremely harshly and violently to this peaceful, meaningful, appropriate movement. It is estimated that at least five hundred women have lost their lives in these feminine protests in Iranian cities, and that thousands, probably more than five thousand, have been arrested and incarcerated. This massive protest movement was ignited several months ago by the death of another young woman, a protestor for women's equality, at the hands of the police. Protesting the government by anyone, for anything in Iran is very dangerous, but for women in huge nembers, thousands aodn thousands of women, take to the streets, it is seen as a direct attack on the most traditional and sacred aspects of Iranian Islamic religious culture. Because of the murderous violence visited pon the protesting Iranian women by the state gestappo, the movement has largely gone online now, and is being seen by people all over the world; but not by Iranians. The government censored and banned it, not surprisingly. Historically, past and present, throughout most of the world, male dominance, patriarchal societies, have been the norm. Women, throughout history and in today's world, have been and remain oppressed, given second class status by male dominated cultures. Of all the horrible inequities in our world, racial, economic, just to name two of many, gender inequality is the most glaring, the most shocking, considering the numerical advantage of women in general, and the most worthy of destruction. Women are more free and powerful in the United States than in any other country in the world, basically. And yet, these United States still have much work to do to achieve actual, true, demonstrable, verifiable gender equality, economic, political, you name it. The rest of the world, generally speaking, has much more work to do, much fatehr to go to achieve gender equality. Africa, Asia, and Latin America all have ubiquitously much more conservative cultures than we in the United States, incredible as that might seem. On those continents, male dominance, patriarchy, is deeply entrenced, widely accepted, without much resistance to it at all. Still, throughout the world, awareness of the universal, historical and contemporary mistreatment and gross inequality of women is spreading and growing, as more people get educated. World wide women will eventually gain equality, although lord only knows when. Its amazing that it hasn't already happened, and that fact does not speak well for homo sapien sapiens.